ELKINS — The Refinery Church plans to purchase the Steer Steakhouse restaurant and Gandy Dancer Theater for use in its ministry, community work, community engagement and more, officials said.

Pastor Roy Schneider announced the church’s plans to purchase the 20,000 square-foot facility on the Beverly Pike, explaining that the space would give the church the opportunity to partner with the community in new ways, as well as have space to meet the needs of their “growing church family.”

The Refinery Church is currently located at 110 Third Street in the Seneca Mall in Elkins.

“God opened a door. The folks at Western Steer and the Gandy Dancer had reached out to us that they were looking to retire and were interested in selling the building to us,” Schneider told The Inter-Mountain Wednesday. “So we began some talks and we went and checked the facility out… it’s in a great location to kind of be in the downtown/Corridor (area), and to continue to do a lot of the things that we do at the church, as well.”

Schneider said an agreement has been reached for the church to purchase and close on the property by December 2026. In a social media post about the plan, Schneider said the church will soon be launching a capital campaign to help raise money for the project.

In a previous statement to The Inter-Mountain last year, Schneider explained that the church was planning on building a structure for its ministry on a property it had purchased near North Elementary School on Kennedy Street. On Wednesday, Schneider said the property will now be used to house a skatepark for the community.

“We had had every intention of building a church facility there, but just the cost of building a facility in today’s world is just exponential,” Schneider said. “I think the steepest quote that we got was six million dollars, and we couldn’t fathom spending that kind of money to build a facility, especially not in Elkins, West Virginia, where there’s a lot of other facilities that we could use for a much cheaper price to take care of our people and be a part of the community.”

The Refinery Church doesn’t have a “crazy amount” of plans for the building starting off, Schneider said. The church does plan to renovate the Steer Steakhouse side of the building for the church’s kids and youth ministry programs, the church’s clothes and special needs closet and the feeding programs it currently offers at the Seneca Mall.

Schneider also mentioned future plans to maybe expand the building, possibly adding a second floor to the Steer Steakhouse side, to accommodate transitional living spaces for those in need of housing while getting back on their feet.

“We’ve got a lot of housing issues… So we’re hoping, down the road, with having that big of a space and the room to do some other stuff, that we may be able to… do some transitional living spaces where folks are trying to get back on their feet,” Schneider said. “We can provide a space for them to live for six months to a year until they can get a job and do all those things that we have to do to get back on our feet.”

When asked what will happen to the Gandy Dancer Theater and the dinner shows provided there, Schneider said, while all of the details have not yet been discussed with the Gandy Dancer Theater, the church was interested in continuing some form of entertainment in the space.

“We’re interested in the possibility of continuing to do some of that stuff,” Schneider said. “It may not look exactly like it does right now, but the space is adequate for us to allow our community to use that space as well. That’s kind of our heartbeat. We’re big on having a space that the community has the opportunity to come together and use.”